Based on Frost & Sullivan’s Strategic Analysis of the European Market for Vehicle-to-Vehicle and Vehicle-to-infrastructure Communication Systems, demand for such communication systems is growing due to their ability to improve traffic efficiency, mobility, safety and driving conditions, while reducing the risk of road hazards.
News analysis expects more than 40 per cent of vehicles to use vehicle-to-vehicle (V2V) communication technologies by 2030.
In Europe, Daimler and Volvo are anticipated to lead the implementation of V2V communication systems among vehicle original equipment manufacturers (OEMs).
Additionally, vehicle-to-infrastructure (V2I) communication systems have also been gaining significant traction in Europe, especially in the Netherlands, Denmark, Austria, Germany, and France.
“Vehicular communication systems are becoming popular as countries across Europe look to minimize the huge losses in time and related costs incurred due to traffic congestion,” said Frost & Sullivan Automotive & Transportation Industry Analyst Neelam Barua. “Traffic jams in Germany for instance, lead to a macroeconomic loss of more than €17 billion annually.”
“The average driver annually loses close to a complete work-week stuck in traffic jams,” added Frost & Sullivan Automotive & Transportation Team Leader Prana Tharthiharan Natarajan. “This scenario is common to both Europe and the U.S. The deployment of V2I can reduce such down-time by a huge factor. Additionally, V2I/V2V is the ultimate enabler of automated driving, which is presently built on self-sufficient architectures.”
One of the prominent enabling technologies in this market is the cooperative system, which uses wireless local area network (WLAN) or dedicated short-range communications (DSRC), to assist V2V, V2I or infrastructure-to-vehicle (I2V) communication. It is expected that global navigation satellite systems (GNSS) and infrared modes will augment DSRC solutions and mobile-based technologies such as long term evolution (LTE) to form the futuristic platform for cooperative-intelligent transportation systems (C-ITS) in the region.
Market participants plan to introduce Cooperative-ITS communication systems to take automotive safety to an even higher level. The Car 2 Car Communication Consortium has signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with major vehicle manufacturers to facilitate the deployment of a standard pan-European C-ITS by 2015.
The European market also needs an effective business model that identifies the parties that will primarily benefit from these vehicle communication solutions, that recognizes the team that will maintain the integrated system, and clarifies the methods of revenue generation. The availability of reliable and robust products that cater to the vehicular communication requirements, the degree of market acceptance and interoperability of V2I/V2V devices, as well as product conformance and upgradability will also be key to market growth.
“With market-ready products for V2I/V2V communication already made available by Tier I suppliers, new products embedded with V2X technology launched by automotive OEMs, and the strong backing extended by EU governments, the market for C-ITS is likely to witness considerable growth in the next two to three years,” stated Barua. “In fact, 15 OEMs and ten Tier I suppliers across Europe are expected to deploy V2I/V2V applications by 2015.”
“Interestingly, crowd-sourced V2I/V2V information from the connected car space is also gaining traction. A number of telematics service providers are looking to enable V2I/V2V through tethered and embedded connectivity interfaces that allow vehicles to send and receive data that could serve as the nascent stage of V2I/V2V, in the absence of DSRC or WLAN,” concluded Natarajan. “Letting vehicles interact with each other can reduce crashes involving multiple vehicles, whereas ensuring V2I/V2V interactivity with passive elements such as environment, pedestrians, bicyclists etc. is essential for the future.”
